Professional Development. Message to Newer Litigators: Don't Just Wait by the Phone

• Author: Charles D. Tobin
• Pages: 9-10

Published in Litigation, Volume 46, Number 2, Winter 2020. © 2020 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not

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should invigorate us, as every day carries

the prospect of doing something great for

someone else.

Our process is an adversarial one. But

adversarial need not mean personal. If

we keep that in mind and recognize that

all of us are the same type of person, just

on opposite sides of the “v,” we can begin

to recapture the professional civility and

consideration that once defined the art of

advocacy and the practice of law. q

PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPMENT

Message to

Newer Litigators:

Don’t Just Wait

by the Phone

CHARLES D. TOBIN

The author is a partner with Ballard Spahr LLP,

in Washington, D.C., and a senior editor of

Litigation.

Always—always—answer your phone. But

never sit around waiting for it to ring.

Three distinct times in my so-called

adult life, answering the phone has

changed the trajectory of my career. And

in between calls, I’ve looked for any way I

could to keep moving forward on my own.

Exactly 30 years ago, on a Saturday dur-

ing my last year of law school, the phone

rang in my Gainesville, Florida, apartment.

It was an obnoxiously early hour. I’d spent

the night before at a watering hole with

classmates, working out our frustrations

over many pitchers of beer. My voice was

all rasp.

The owner of the upbeat southern accent

on the other end sounded as if he’d been up

for hours. “Chuck, this is George Gabel in

Jacksonville. I was just going through to-

day’s mail at the office. [Did I mention this

was a Saturday?] I saw your nice letter and

résumé. Would you like to come over and

visit with me tomorrow [on a Sunday]?”

That fateful call led to a lifelong men-

torship and dozens of my first appear-

ances in court. George, now retired after

an epic career as rainmaker and king-

maker, was one of those lawyers who

made success look absolutely effortless.

Clients flocked to him, judges waited on

his every word, jurors nodded like bob-

bleheads when he argued. He chaired ev-

ery group that mattered—and many that

didn’t. Except to the participants. And

that mattered to George. He was the per-

fect first role model for any young lawyer.

In my fourth year at George’s firm, the

phone rang again. “Chuck, this is Barbara

Wall.” I put down the accident-reconstruc-

tion report I had been studying. Barbara,

now the chief legal officer for newspaper

publishing company Gannett, at the time

headed its in-house litigation group at

the company’s Northern Virginia head-

quarters. I was a summer intern there

during law school, and Barbara and I had

remained in close touch.

Gannett had just created a position for

an in-house litigator, and it was exactly the

type of First Amendment–focused work

that I’d gone to law school for—defense of